I am the Executive Director for the Alliance for Middle East Peace and am a contributor at Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post. This blog is a collection of my writings and recordings from around the web. All views are in a personal capacity unless otherwise stated.

If we split the parties into the right, left, center, ultra orthodox and arab + Hadash parties we can see who took from who in this election.

Right – (Likud, Bayit Yehudi, Yisrael Beytanu) 44 (+1) – The right managed to pick up a seat on this election.

Left – (Zionist Union, Meretz) – 29 (+8) – looking at the results it might surprise people that the left got 7 more seats. 6 of these are because Livni moved from the center directly into the left camp, but the left also managed to win an additional mandate.

Ultra Orthodox – (Shas, UJT) 13 (-5) – With Yachad still under the threshold (and they may pass it as the solider votes are counted) you can see the ultra orthodox losing almost a 3rd of their strength due to the wasted votes and infighting by Deri and Yishai

Center – (Yesh Atid, Kulanu) 21 (-6) – the six went to the left with Livni joining the Zionist Camp. The center actually held with Kulanu taking Yesh Atid and Kadmia’s votes

The Joint List – 13 (+2) – the joining of the parties and the GOTV campaign led to arab turn out of 67% (up from 54% in 2013) this led to more votes and mandates.

Looking at the bloc votes what we can see is that the religious right bloc actually went down by 4 seats from 2013. Bibi left the Ultra Orthodox out last time (he was forced to by the Bennett Lapid union) so his traditional right-religous bloc of 61 was not the foundation of the coalition. This time the right-religious bloc is not a majority, its only 57 – therefore the need to get Kulanu to join from the center to put him over the top.

Kahlon will do what ever he will, though I find it nearly impossible that he won’t recommend Bibi given his 6 seat win over Hertzog.

So what was the story of this election, we saw a shrinkage of the religious right bloc but a domination by Netanyahu over the bloc. In the last days of the election he moved the Likud to the right and in doing so took votes from within the bloc on solidified his position as the undisputed leader of the right and returned Likud back to a major power without the need of a unity list.

On the left – Livni crossing from the center to the left has the same effect on Hertzog – making him the first Labour leader in years to get more then 20 mandates. The left did grow by a seat, by the 4.1% boost in turn out clearly did not only go to the Zionist Camp. The left did grow by 2 (excluding Livni) so there were some votes that came into bloc that it had not captured before.

The Left Arab bloc in 2015 is 42 (+10) a ten seat gain. Now this is not the same bloc as the religious right as the current Zionist Left and Joint list have not worked a way to work better together. However if the left is ever to hold a stable coalition, they are going to need to find a way to work together.

With 2015 – I find it very hard to believe that anyone but Bibi will be PM. Like everyone else I think that Kahlon will join the religious right coalition and Bibi will have a government of 67 (Likud, Bayit Yehudi, Yisrael Beytanu, Shas, UJT, Kulanu). He will want others to join so that it is not so ideologically right (given how the outside world will see it) but I predict he will fail to attract anyone else to it.

Bibi will have a much stronger government then the one he formed in 2013 – and given his abandonment of the 2 state solution and the aggressive stance he took on the election day against the arab minority, he is the right prime minster to lead a coalition that wishes to annex land and pass loyalty tests to citizens.

Whether it was the woe is me (Gevalt!) campaign or the scare tactics that Bibi used, he won this election, hands down. What we all need to understand with clear eyes, is that his fear tactics worked. He also demonstrated that the entire right wing bloc is his base vote. That says a lot about where Israeli society is up to. It also demonstrates the depth of the challenge that those of us who wish to see a less fear driven Israel, face.